Obama wins debate

Last night Barack Obama and John McCain had at it in their second Presidential debate in the U.S. John McCain has been slipping in the polls and needed a game-changer to break Obama’s momentum. He didn’t get it. Pundits and polls agree that Obama won the might, with CNN’s poll showing a big 54 to 43% advantage for Obama.

Nevertheless, my opinion from viewing the debate is that both candidates were on auto-pilot. Neither addressed the stock meltdown – Earth to candidates.

Neither made specific proposals for changing the freeze in credit markets. These two just pulled out the same tired commentary that they have been making for months. And they focused much too much on taking pot shots at each other than they should have.

The debate was boring and disappointing. I give a big fat C- to Obama and a D+ to McCain.CNN seems to think otherwise:

A national poll of debate watchers suggests that Barack Obama won the second presidential debate.

Fifty-four percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey conducted after the debate ended said that Obama did the best job in the debate, with 30 percent saying John McCain performed better.

A majority, 54 percent, said Obama seemed to be the stronger leader during the debate, to 43 percent for McCain. By a greater than two to one margin — 65 percent to 28 percent — viewers thought Obama was more likeable during the debate.

“Obama had made some gains on the leadership issue even before the debate,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “McCain’s advantage on leadership shrunk from 19 points in September to just five points this weekend. If Obama can use this debate to convince Americans that he is a stronger leader than McCain, he may be difficult to defeat.”

A majority of debate watchers polled thought Obama was more intelligent, by a 57 percent to 25 percent margin over McCain. Twice as many debate watchers also thought Obama more clearly expressed than McCain, with 60 percent giving the nod to the Democratic nominee and 30 percent to his GOP opponent.

Hands down, debate watchers questioned thought McCain rather than Obama spent more time attacking his opponent: 63 percent said McCain went more negative, as opposed to 17 percent who pointed to Obama.

Half of those polled say Obama answered questions more directly, 13 points ahead of McCain, and by a 14 point advantage debate watchers thought Obama seemed to care more about the probelms of audience members who asked questions.

McCain did come out on top in one category that neither candidate wants to win: By a 16 point margin, debate watchers thought McCain seemed more like a typical politician during the debate.

According to the poll, 64 percent had a favorable opinion of Obama after the debate, up four points from the pre-debate result. McCain’s favorability rating remained unchanged: both before and after the debate percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of the Republican nominee both before and after the debate.

“For McCain, the key finding may be that his favorable rating did not change at all,” Holland said. “It’s unclear whether Obama will gain any momentum from Tuesday night’s debate, but it looks like McCain will not do so, and for a candidate who has consistently been a few points behind in national polls, that’s not a good sign.”

The poll suggests that independent voters thought Obama won the debate. Fifty-four percent of those identifying themselves as independent say Obama performed best, with 28 percent saying that McCain did the better job.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted by telephone with 675 adult Americans who watched the debate. All interviews were taken after the end of the debate. The audience for this debate was 38 percent Democratic and 31 percent Republican — very close to the partisan breakdown among all Americans nationwide. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

(Updated with additional poll results)

Don’t be fooled by this CNN article. These two did not get the job done — too much finger pointing and re-hash. My wife left and went to sleep halfway through. We must demand more vision and leadership from McCain and Obama than they showed last might. There is one more debate. Let’s hope we see better then. After all, these are trying times and we need leadership.

Edward Harrison is the founder of Credit Writedowns and a former career diplomat, investment banker and technology executive with over twenty five years of business experience. He has also been a regular economic and financial commentator in print and on television for the past decade. He speaks six languages and reads another five, skills he uses to provide a more global perspective. Edward holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College.